“I’m glad to see you’re not so skinny anymore,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” I set down the wonton.
He asked about my family. I gave him the brief sketch. Dan was taking the baby paintings to London. My mom was still fighting crime in New Jersey.
And Peg?
Still stage-managing
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Only, Antonio Banderas had left and John Stamos had taken over the role. And she was elected high priestess of her coven for the coming year.
The rest of our food came. I took one look at the blob of semi-cooked egg floating in broth and pushed the bowl aside.
“What’s wrong with your soup?” Ty asked.
“I guess I’m just not in the mood for it, after all.”
He spooned some plain brown rice onto a plate and set it in front of me.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. I watched him overfill a moo shu pancake, roll it up, and cram it in his mouth. Voracious as ever. “I saw your video.”
“Oh, yeah,” he laughed. “Weird, huh?”
“It’s pretty.”
“Yeah. Bizarre. I had to watch it a few hundred times just to try to comprehend that that was me.”
“Who is the girl?”
“This chick named Ralitsa. She’s a model, just got off the plane from Bulgaria the week before. She knew about ten words of English. Her asshole manager boyfriend sat on the side of the road shouting at her the whole time, supposedly translating for the director.”
“I thought maybe you were seeing her in real life.”
“Huh?”
“The way she was crying and holding on to you at the end. It seemed so real.”
He shook his head. “That was starvation. She was about to pass out. After the first take I asked her if she was okay, and she told me the manager boyfriend hadn’t let her eat anything since lunch the day before because she was getting fat. So I asked for a ten-minute break and took her to the craft services table and stared the asshole down while she ate a bagel.”
“Ty, that is heroic!”
He gave me a big, happy smile and shoveled in another forkful of General Tso’s chicken. “Her acting really deteriorated after she ate. The director was annoyed with me.”
“You did the right thing.”
“That song sounds ridiculous now, they jacked everything up so much on it. It was just a quiet little tune, you know? I feel like they kinda fucked it up.”
Don’t get me started about the song.
“I told Dave, the next album gets made in New York, not L.A. It’s so weird there. I figure maybe here I can stay clearer about how I want things to sound.”
“That makes sense.” Like I knew anything about recording an album. And I couldn’t even look at the title of the song without my throat closing up. But I couldn’t bear how disappointed he sounded. “Ty, I think the song sounds great. It’s beautiful. So moving.”
“Really? You were moved?”
“Oh, yes, definitely.” He was watching me so closely. I turned my eyes to reading a sugar packet, before he saw in them all the ridiculous, embarrassing things that must never be seen.
“Aren’t you gonna eat anything?” he asked, after a while.
I picked up a fork and made myself swallow some of the rice. I mostly just looked at him surreptitiously, until he caught me at it.
“What?” he asked, dousing an egg roll with soy sauce.
“You have big muscles.” It came out sounding strangely accusatory. “Huh? Oh, yeah.” He looked down at his biceps, straining the denim fabric of his shirt. “Push-ups.”
Annoyance flared. “I guess that helps.”
“With?”
“Your social life.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” Somebody stop me.
“Well, I won’t deny it.” He set his fork down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “But you can believe I’m not stupid about it.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Not my concern.”
He shoved his plate aside. “Why do you think you know so much about my sex life?”
I spoke before thinking. “You know about this thing called the Internet, right?”
“Let’s talk about
your
life,” he said shortly, tossing his crumpled napkin on his plate. “Who are you doing now?”
I tried to lighten the tone. “I don’t do anyone. I’ve reverted to virgin status.”
“You lie,” he said.
“I never lie,” I lied.
He poured a cup of tea and sugared it up and slowly sipped it while he watched me toy with and choke down a few more bites of rice, although I did not want to eat at all and my head was pounding.
Obviously, being with him for even a meal was so bad for me that it was making me literally sick.
We left the restaurant, went down to Bleecker, and headed west.
“Come see my apartment,” Ty said.
“No.” I was feeling too ill to even make up a nice excuse.
“Come on, just for a minute. It’s right there.”
I was horrified. He lived only a few blocks away! No wonder I’d run into him twice already.
“Come on,” he said.
God, I wanted my bed. “All right, only for a couple of minutes, then I have to go.”
It was in a doorman building, a one-bedroom that he was in the process of buying. I walked in and down a few steps into the sunken living room.
“It’s nice,” I said, looking at a baby grand and a big white couch.
“But you need some more furniture.” I shivered and wrapped my arms around my shoulders. “And you should turn the heat on, it’s freezing in here!”
He gave me a funny look and tossed his jacket on the couch. He showed me the small but adequate bathroom. It had old, mauve-porcelain fixtures that were kind of pretty. There was nothing in the bedroom but a rumpled bed, a straight-backed chair, an amplifier, piles of cables, and four guitars. The kitchen was a small galley, but it had new stainless-steel appliances and, most wonderfully, a stackable washer and dryer.
“Well, congratulations, this place is great.” I headed for the door. He got there first and blocked my exit.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Why are you in such a damned hurry?”
“I just have to go!”
“Okay. I’ll let you go. But first you have to answer a question.”
I rubbed my temples to try to ease some of the ache. “What is it?”
He came close and said in a low voice, “Have you been Googling me, Grace?”
I shivered. My nipples tightened like I was wading in the ocean on New Year’s Day. I crossed my arms to hide them.
He put his arms around me. “Have you?”
I was feeling so ill and confused. But Ty was holding me. And he was
warm
. I nestled tightly against him and pressed my face into the opening of his shirt, to try to absorb some of his heat.
“That’s it. Come on, darlin’, look at me.” He rubbed my back. “Let’s just be real with each other, for once.”
“Ty,” I moaned. I looked up at him.
His eyes darkened. They went to my mouth and he leaned down.
“I don’t think you should kiss me,” I said. “I think I’m sick.”
He felt my forehead. “Grace, you’re burning up!”
“I am?” No wonder I felt so dazed.
“Yeah. Let’s take care of you.” He half-carried me to the bedroom. “Here, lay down.”
“Lie,” I said, getting into the bed. “It’s lie down.”
“Uh-huh.” He pulled off my boots and covered me with the down comforter. He left the room and came back with a lovely crystal bowl that he set beside me on the bed.
“What is that?”
“In case you need to puke. Just lean over and do it. You don’t have to get up.”
“
If
I need to vomit, I’m not doing it in that! It looks like it was a gift from the president.”
“It was. Of the record company. Go ahead, it’s washable.”
I was so cold, and my knees and elbows ached like someone was pounding them with a hammer. I burrowed under his comforter and asked for more covers. He left the room and came back with a crocheted afghan I recognized from his parents’ house. He laid it over me and sat beside me and made a joke about how apparently even the idea of kissing him made me sick.
“Stop talking now,” I said, through chattering teeth.
He felt my face and neck and arms. “You’re really hot.”
“That line may work with your average fourteen-year-old,” I groaned. “Could you please call Peg and tell her to come get me? Tell her to come in a cab, and ask him to wait.”
He went to make the call. I curled into the tightest possible ball of misery.
fever
Why was everything so quiet? Where was he? And how long did it take to make a simple phone call? It seemed like Peg should have been here by now to get me. I had no idea what time it was. Maybe she wasn’t home from the show yet.
I drifted off. I came back to awareness, somewhat, at the touch of his hand on my face. Warm.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
I opened my eyes. He was unwrapping a new digital thermometer.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to open my mouth. Some of my small store of heat might escape.
“Or we can do this another way.”
I opened.
He waited patiently, sitting beside me, until the thermometer beeped.
“Damn!” he said, reading it.
He went away and after a while came back and made me sit up. He pressed a glass to my lips. “Drink.”
My sense of taste was messed up, but I think it was Sprite. Icy Sprite. I turned my head away and tried to hunker back down under the covers, but he pulled me upright again. “Grace. Drink!”
I swallowed some. And some more. And shivered uncontrollably.
“Damn. Something very bad has got a hold of you.”
“Uuunnnhhh,” I agreed miserably.
He went away with the glass. I drifted. He came back and next thing, he was pulling the covers off of me.
“Wha—”
He swabbed my face with a shockingly cold, wet washcloth. I shrieked and shoved his hand away. He pushed my shirt up and ran the cloth over my stomach.
“Stop! You’re hurting me! Go away!” I pulled the covers back over me, burrowing deep.
“Grace, let me do this.”
“No!” I was completely buried now under miles of king-size down comforter. “Leave me alone!” I shouted from deep within my comforter cave. “Did you call Peg to come get me? Please call her again!”
He went away again and when he came back he dragged me, cave and all, to the side of the bed. Then he took the comforter away completely and tossed it against the wall.
I started to cry. “Why are you torturing me?”
He was unbuttoning my blouse. “Baby, I’m not. We have to get your temperature down a couple of points, or I’m gonna have to take you to the ER.”
“Just. Call. PEG!” I wept, winding my fingers tightly into the belt loops of my jeans. He pried my fingers loose and stripped the jeans off me.
I was now down to my push-up bra, knee socks, and underwear. Thong. I asked this illness, whatever it was, to just go ahead and kill me.
He reached for me. I tried to push him away. He carried me to the bathroom and half-lowered/half-dropped me into the bathtub.
I was momentarily, completely immobilized by the shock of the cold water. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and scooped the torture liquid up over my arms and chest and even my head.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I wept miserably.
He wouldn’t. I grabbed a bottle of Pert and managed to thump him hard in the ribs with it before he took it away.
“Okay, okay.” He ended the freezing onslaught. I tried to stand up, but he held me down in the water. I clung to his shoulders and pressed every part of me I could against him, just trying to get warm.
“Get me out of here,” I said.
“Not yet.”
“It’s too cold!”
“Grace, the water is lukewarm. Not even cold.”
“Ty, that can’t be true!”
He made me sit there for eons. My butt got numb. I fell into a light coma and woke up drooling on the leg of his jeans. Then, just for kicks, he scooped a few more handfuls of freezingness over me before he decided I’d had enough.
He helped me stand up and handed me a towel. He pointed out the folded T-shirt on the edge of the vanity and went away. I shut the door behind him and punched the lock on the doorknob.
I unsteadily peeled off the soaked panties and bra and socks. I was so weak and achy that I had to sit on the edge of the bathtub to dry myself. I pulled the big black T-shirt over my head.
Not all who wander are lost
, it said, in white letters.
I wrapped the towel around my wet hair and opened the door. He was waiting for me in the hall. I let him lead me back to the bed and cover me up and take my temperature again. I knew the fever had gone down, because I was no longer shivering.
“One hundred and one point five!” he announced triumphantly.